tter quiet about its edges, for
there was here no slightest breath of air. Lush grass carpeted its
level floor. And there, almost directly under the marked way leading
down, lay a tiny camp--the ashes of a dead fire, a gun against a tree,
and--here Tharon leaned far out and looked as if her very spirit would
penetrate the distance--a blanket spread on the level earth, on which
there lay the body of a man!

It was a trim body, they could see from where they stood, clad in dark
garments of olive drab that hugged the lean limbs close.

"Kenset!" whispered Tharon with paling lips. "Kenset of th'
foothills,--an'--he--looks," she wet those ashy lips, "he--looks like
he is dead."

Without another word she set her feet in the precarious way and went
down so fast that Billy's heart rose in his throat and choked him, and
for the first time since he could remember, he called fervently upon
his Maker with honest reverence. He thought at every slip and scramble
that she must fall and go hurtling down the Rockface.

But that uncanny instinct which had brought her this far was at her
command still. She went down faster than it seemed possible for
anything to go, and before the rider was able to catch up she had
leaped to the grassy floor, and was running forward toward that still
form on the blanket.

"Kenset!" she cried like a bugle, "Kenset! Kenset! Oh,--David!"

And then it was that the quiet form stirred, rolled over on its side,
lifted itself on an elbow--and held out two arms that wavered
grotesquely, but were eloquent of love's power and its need.

And the Mistress of Last's flung herself on her knees, gathered up
this strange man as if he had been a child, pressed him hard against
her breast, and kissed him as we kiss our dead. She pushed his face
from her and looked into it as if she would see his very soul, the
tears running on her white cheeks, her lips working soundlessly.

This was love! This agony--this ecstasy--this sublime forgetting of
all the world beside--this reward after struggle.

Billy stood for a second at the foot of the Wall, and the nails cut in
his palms. Then he whirled and went fast as he could walk toward the
first trees that presented themselves--and he could not see where he
was going for the bleak grey mist that swam in his eyes.

This was love! This dreary colour of the golden sunlight of noon in
the high country--this dumb ache that locked his throat--this high
courage that brought him s